• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, March 16, 2022

I have led many teams and have been around many great leaders.  I’ve learned quite a bit along the way, and although I’ve also still got a lot to learn, there is one thing i think is important for all leaders to hear.  More importantly, there is something all leaders should avoid saying -- three simple words that make your team lose a little bit of their motivation.  Those three words are “I, me, mine."

Those three words are more than just the title of an amazing Beatles song.  They are poison to team camaraderie.  The words are used far too often when speaking about “your” team.

I often hear leaders say “My team will do this.”  When you place a possessive term on a group of people, you are discounting those people.  When you refer to a team as “mine,” you are anonymizing all the great talent that exists and which makes a team productive.  A team is an inter-woven, inter-dependent group of employees or players, where each complements the other folks on the team.  

The team is not yours, any more than any one of those people are yours. 

“I” is another word that can de-motivate a team.  “I” is singular and implies everyone else on the team is secondary.  You may not be doing that intentionally.  You may not be making that statement in a way that you mean as demotivating, but it is.  No one person is greater than the team.  The old adage “there’s no I in team” stands true.  You see it all the time in sports, and you see it all the time in the workplace.

I, me, mine stem from ego, and ego is the ultimate demotivating force for any team of any size.  Ego is when you place yourself above the team.  There are many great examples of great leaders with strong egos, but i would argue there are more examples of productive teams who were led by a leader who knew when to put their ego aside.  

A team succeeds when you say “we” rather than “I.”  A team perseveres when they know the team is recognized for its effort and achievement rather than any single person on the team. The role of the leader is to make the team greater than the sum of its parts.

Leading a team requires you to recognize how to stimulate the egos of the folks on your team.  That is your priority.  It has little to do with you being recognized as a great leader.  If your team succeeds, then you will be recognized.  If your team fails, you will also be recognized, albeit in a way that you may not want.

 Your job is to get the most out of your team.  Maximize their talents.  Tap into their collective strengths and help them overcome the weaknesses of any one area.  A great leader knows this and says “we can do this” and “let’s go”  as a group.

So the next time you are writing an email, or responding to a request, check your note for the “I, me, mine” and see if you can recognize the team around you by removing the possessive phrases and focusing on the team instead.  

It’s not about you.  It’s about the team.